Under the deal, Jefferson Health and Mission Health will be sharing learnings from past projects and working together with InTouch Health to design mutually-beneficial and innovative telehealth programs to address their most pressing healthcare needs. Over five years, the partners will continue their commercial relationships and identify new areas — primarily within acute care and outpatient care — where providers can use telehealth technology to streamline access to care and increase care coordination. To that end, a collaborative team from all three organizations will work to develop software and systems applications to support these goals for use by Jefferson, Mission, and the broader healthcare market nationwide.

"InTouch Health is thrilled to work with Mission Health and Jefferson Health — two leading healthcare institutions — to further advance the capabilities of telehealth to improve health systems' ability to virtualize the delivery of care," Joseph M. DeVivo, InTouch Health CEO, said in a statement. "We look forward to discovering new ways telehealth can help innovate healthcare to drive efficiencies that will improve quality of care and increase both patient and physician satisfaction."

The parties will be working to create virtual care models across 10 identified use cases, including stroke, sepsis, and acute heart failure. Once developed, those care models will be tested at Jefferson Health, primarily an urban setting, and Mission Health, primarily a suburban/rural setting, to ensure the care pathways and supporting technologies improve patient access and quality of care and are applicable across markets and geographies.

"In the mostly rural and mountainous counties of western North Carolina, technologies like the InTouch Telehealth Network allow our patients and communities to have the same access to state-of-the-art, highly specialized care as patients in large cities," Ronald A. Paulus, MD, President and CEO of Mission Health, said in a statement.

Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, is also pleased with the deal. "By partnering with InTouch, we are leveraging their technology and bringing it to our patients, allowing them to access our specialized physicians when and where they need them," he said.

Prior to this collaborative effort, both Jefferson Health and Mission Health have worked with InTouch Health: Jefferson Health leverages the company's telestroke solution for close to 10 years, serving 30 hospitals in the Jefferson Neuroscience Network. On the other hand, Mission Health provides telehealth services throughout western North Carolina, including one of North Carolina's longest standing telestroke networks as well as telepscyhiatric, tele-hospitalist, and tele-neonatology programs.